


And the work is play for mortal stakes

by breathedout



Category: Sneaky Pete (TV)
Genre: Career Satisfaction, Con Artists, Consent Issues, F/M, Found Family, Heists, Lies and the liars that tell them, Multi, Vocation vs Avocation, Voyeurism, and the kind of third-party, and the other kind, hope springs eternal etc. etc., in other news I wholeheartedly wrote het! what is the world coming to?, that generally come with this genre, they are all much Better People (TM) than in canon, though tbh this story is morally VERY kind to all these characters, though: bisexual Maggie is strongly implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-09 03:38:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14708394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathedout/pseuds/breathedout
Summary: "That wastrue!" said Marius. "Mostly!"





	And the work is play for mortal stakes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greywash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/gifts).



> For my beloved [greywash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash), who shipped Maggie/Marius with a vengeance the whole time we were watching _Sneaky Pete_. 
> 
> I apologize up front for the hand-wavy-ness of the actual con in this story. I feel like I'm okay at traditional mystery plotting, but this is a slightly different animal and I was working to a deadline. (Not "meeting," granted; but "working to.") Also, this is un-betaed because I was stealth-writing it so couldn't get Gins's input, or even mention it to her in casual conversation, which frankly was HORRIBLE and I'm never doing it again, oh my god, it was stupidly hard and I sucked A LOT at it and as a result she probably knows all about this story already.
> 
> Thanks to [little-brisk](http://little-brisk.tumblr.com/) for a quick tarot consult, and to my New York BFF who bankrolled an expedition to a Manhattan tarot card reader as research for this story—as well as the drinks afterward, during which we debriefed our fortunes. 
> 
> Title is from the Robert Frost poem "Two Tramps in Mud Time."

Carly was so low-key about it, he almost didn't react at all. And that was with him sitting there, acting as he was, _because_ he already knew she suspected. She'd been sniffing around him for a week, poking at this and that aspect of his story, even tailing him when she could; but plainly _wanting_ something, too, in a way he couldn't help but feel he could use. And so there they sat, on the front steps, a few days after the Luka fiasco: Marius on his second beer and his would-be cousin taking overly casual sips from the one he'd snagged for her from the fridge, her legs un-knotting from each other, her eyes coming up to meet his like she'd forgotten for a minute that the whole world has it out for you at sixteen. Letting the kid sound him out about prison of all things, because she'd seemed interested. Probably thought it was cool. That it made him hard. So he answered her earnest questions about cigarettes, and pen pals, and made encouraging noises when she said a kid from her class was organizing petitions to free prisoners incarcerated on drug charges. Lightning-bugs down by the road and the unnatural quiet of the street; "Yeah," she said, absently, "I guessed you'd agree about that. Pete told me about your mom."

The old quarter-second of stillness before the assessment program kicked on in his brain: damage and opportunity. What do they know, what do they have, what do they want, what can be salvaged, what can be gained. Cover blown, but. Pete's surly teenaged cousin—who slammed doors and stomped her combat boots and complained to her grandma and her sister and Marius himself at being treated like a kid—was here, on the porch, bringing this knowledge to Marius instead of to someone else. Marius looked down, solemn, at his beer.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, Pete saw some of that. She visited once. My mom."

Next to him he could hear Carly hold her breath, then remember and let it out. Then take a too-fast sip of her beer, looking out at Audrey's truck: hooked.

"I suppose Pete told you about the—about Mikey," Marius said. "Mikey and me and the razor blades." Carly shook her head, silent and big-eyed, and Marius told her a story, and didn't smile. 

When the story was over, and the one after it, all delivered in the world-weary tones of a wounded son, he felt sure enough of her discretion not to take off in the middle of the night—but still wary enough to want to keep an eye on her. He thought he read her right: in thrall to his tragic past; her serious mouth and her sad nods when he played the pathos card. But the kid was sixteen, for Christ's sake. She didn't know herself what she'd do next. So he didn't fight it, a few mornings later, when the passenger door of Audrey's truck opened as he turned the ignition and there was Carly, clambering up. 

"Hey, Cousin Marius, she said. 

Marius sat back and looked at her and then said, "You hitching a ride to the city, or?" She took out a joint and lit up, looking at him in her would-be tough little-girl way. "All right," he said. "Text Audrey where you're going," and backed the truck around and out the drive. 

It wasn't like his plans in the city were all that scandalous: Carly wanted to tag along, there was no harm in it. She spent the drive down I-95 shoring up her newfound insight, playing anthropologist while just poking her toe at what she actually, transparently wanted to know. How did the prison social structure work? What was his take on depictions in mob movies, and did Pete talk about her, ever? Did Pete talk about, you know, her family? Marius played a little dumb to keep her dangling: Oh yeah, Pete talked about the family. Pete talked about little _but_ the family: Audrey and Otto mostly, and Julia, and Taylor, and Carly herself; half-pretending he didn't know she was really asking: Did Pete talk about my parents? Rather than stir that particular pot, Marius figured, he would turn around and ask her how she'd figured out he wasn't Pete: a point-blank question for a point-blank question. But she didn't come right out and ask, so he didn't either; and then they were pulling up outside Marjorie's bookshop, and Carly was laughing at Marius's attempts to parallel-park Audrey's beast of a truck in Brooklyn traffic. 

He left the kid typing into her phone in the passenger's seat; ducked into Marjorie's shop and picked up a book she wanted him to drop off with a contact—which he'd said he could do a few days later, on his way to his check-in with Bagwell. It wouldn't have taken five minutes but she had a lead on a job she wanted to run past him: surveillance in a con run by some Trent character he'd never worked with, which didn't bode well. He told her no; she told him to think about it. "It might be a good idea for you to lie low for a while, you know, low-profile work on other people's jobs," she said. He said that wasn't what most people meant by the phrase "lying low." Marjorie just looked at him. "Marius," she said, and "All right," he said, "all right, I'll think about it," and waved later over his shoulder as he pushed open her shop door. 

Then it just kind of hit him that it was a beautiful September day. His plans had been to pick up the book and head back to the farm, but Carly, as she wasn't shy about telling him, hadn't even gotten out of the truck. Her tough luck, he told her. But she said it wasn't fair; they'd come all this way. And hell, it _was_ pretty. And it was good to be away from the farmhouse. And if he could put himself more firmly in Cousin Carly's good books by taking her sightseeing in the big city—or if she were set on having a heart-to-heart—then better to do it then not.

"Yeah," he told her, "come on then"; and she grinned her wide, still-a-kid grin, and jumped down from the cab.

About then Marius realized he didn't have a clue what a sixteen-year-old girl would want to do on a day off in Brooklyn. Shopping for shoes? Sneaking into bars? Feeling awkward, he let her take the lead. They ate charred brisket tacos from a food truck, and he bought her a huge sugary coffee drink from the hole-in-the-wall coffee shop across the street. After that she seemed happy enough to wander around Williamsburg, petting the dogs and peering in the shop windows. He was braced for more family questions; more prison questions; but they didn't come. "You think that's me?" she asked, gesturing at a black-fringed leather jacket with the words _Cutie Pie_ embroidered on the back, and he snorted and said "Yeah, right," and thought: I wasn't too far off after all. 

She didn't go in to try on the leather jacket, though she made noises about it. And she lingered over a black lace bracelet-and-necklace set that reminded Marius of a girl he went out with in high school, and which Carly called "vintage." He was just starting to get antsy, checking his watch and letting his mind run over the job, the Luka job, reliving scenes like he seemed to do constantly this week—if he'd played it different with the buffalo, say, insisted on taking a look before he'd left that tent, then he'd have been one up on Maggie and if he'd told her—and if she'd said—and if he'd countered, then maybe—so he wasn't paying all that much attention by the time Carly dawdled to a stop for the fifth or sixth time in front of another shop window. This one was crystals: strings of beads; bracelets and necklaces; and Tarot decks: one, antique-looking, the minor arcana laid out in sequence on the black-velvet display so you could see how each picture bled into the next to make a bigger landscape. Carly, sucking on her straw, was looking through the window lettering spelling out THE SACRED WAY, at a black pendant set in gold. It didn't look expensive. When she ducked away from him, inside the shop, his internal groan wasn't really that loud: if he could buy her loyalty it would come cheap enough. He was still thinking about bargaining down the proprietor as he ducked through the door with its jingling bell and took a look around the place—cramped; dusty; Carly smirking amid back-lit glass displays stocked with amethyst and quartz, and a little room in the back with the stencil _Readings_ above the door, and through it—

"Aunt Maggie!" Carly said, waving and smiling. 

Marius felt his head jerk around: following her glance to where Maggie, half-in half-out of her back-room hideaway, stopped dead mouthing _Shit_ silently; and then, aloud, "Marius": hand on her hip. He thought stupidly how she looked just the same: t-shirt, Beatle boots, that faded aviator jacket; well of course she would, he thought: it'd only been a week since they'd. Seen each other. Maggie looked at him, those narrowed green eyes and she moved her hand like she wanted a cigarette and then and looked up at the ceiling, getting ready to say—something; so Marius grabbed Carly by the shoulder and frog-marched her back outside. 

In the truck, on the way back, Carly laughed for a good five minutes. After that the silence stretched out. Carly slurped on the dregs of her sugar-and-coffee bomb and Marius stared straight ahead, revisiting Maggie's hand on her hip and her mouth shaping the words _Shit_ and _Marius_ and her voice over the phone saying it was what she had to do, nothing personal, selling him out was the only way. 

When Carly started to fidget he tensed his jaw. 

"So you," he said. "This whole thing, you—the tacos and the fuckin'—you're so proud of yourself—"

"Like you weren't proud of yourself," she said. "Treating me like a kid, like everyone does, feeding me that whole sad story about, about _prison_ , and your—"

"That was _true_!" said Marius, indignant. "Mostly!" 

"— _mom_ —oh _true_? You lied to my whole family!" 

"Yeah," he said. "Well. I had to do that. It was life or death."

Carly snorted. Settled back into her seat. From two feet away he could physically feel her rolling her eyes.

"I don't feel bad for tricking you," she said. Then she turned to face out the window, with her chin in her hand. Watching the Atlantic flash by past her window. Taking her stand for the long haul. 

"Yeah," Marius said at last, because he had to know the rest of what she had to say. "Well. I guess I can hardly blame you for that."

"I got you," she said. Still looking out the window. 

"Yep," he said. "You did. You really did."

"Your face." He could hear her smiling, behind her own fingers. He made his exhale into a snort: she'd talk to him, now.

"It was pretty good, I'd think," he said. "How did you know where to find her?"

"I have a text string," she told him. "With Pete."

"A text string," he repeated. "With _Pete_."

"Real Pete," Carly said, and Marius said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah," and Carly put her hands up to do a gesture that said, _Just trying to give you all the relevant info, buddy_. Marius thought about punching her on the arm, but it still felt too far to the wrong side of the endearing-to-provoking scale. 

"So—what," he said. "Pete's working in that nonsense shop, too?"

"They're living above it," Carly said. "Him and his mom. He's got a job as a line cook at that gyro place we passed. I thought about taking you in there, but." She shrugged. "This option seemed higher-impact."

If there was ever a statement to set off flashing red danger signals in Marius's brain. Meantime: "Okay," he said. "And how did you end up in a text string with Pete?"

"Figured something was off when you all were over for family dinner," she said. Her posture was loosening: people loved to tell you about their smart plans. "I saw him standing in the doorway of his old bedroom—well, the one Audrey says was his—after he'd gone to the bathroom. His phone's not locked. I snuck it out of his pocket when Gina was helping clear dishes, and texted myself from his number."

Marius thought about asking the obvious follow-up question, but: it was Pete, wasn't it. Pete'd need no prompting at all to believe that the anonymous rando showing up in his texts was his long-lost baby cousin, who had miraculously deduced his identity. 

"Anyways," Carly muttered, into her fist, "I can't tell anyone else, in case you're wondering. Pete made me promise I wouldn't."

"O—kay," Marius said. "I mean, I'm still _definitely_ out of here as of tonight, so as far as I'm concerned tell anyone you want, but. I guess it's good you're respecting Pete's wishes like that."

"What?" said Carly. "No! Why?"

"Why—what did you expect would happen? This is the implosion point. Anyone in the game knows there's a threshold beyond which you can't rely on damage control. This is it."

"That's stupid," Carly said. 

"No," he said. "It's not."

"Nothing's changed! I already knew! Pete and Maggie _obviously_ already knew. Julia already knew! I don't see—"

"Jesu— _Julia_ already knew?"

Carly looked at him, and shut her mouth. He put on his signal, and exited I-95, and it wasn't until about five minutes shy of their exit off 127 North that Carly said, "You don't need to worry about her. Julia has her own problems."

Which—that was true enough, Marius knew. Julia, ever since he'd met her, had had about three more problems than she could reasonably handle. And he knew for a fact that the long domino line of fallout from her foray into money laundering had put both her and the business back in debt, with a deadline looming, to the tune of a number that'd made him whistle when he'd heard. But all that changed nothing. The tipping point had been reached, and he knew it; and so he parked the truck in the drive and sat through one more family dinner—ribbings, side-looks, half-truths and smothered explosions; Audrey digging her claws back into Julia now that Maggie was gone, and Taylor digging his into Audrey, with Otto peeling the label off his Sam Adams and Carly just sitting looking at Marius, eyes big and angry—and then he helped with the dishes, and waited until the early hours, and then slipped out through the front door and circled around under cover of shrubbery so that Carly, waiting him out on the roof next to his window, wouldn't see him leave.  
  


****

  
  
Back in the city, Marius took Marjorie up on her second-fiddle job; she clapped him on the back and said it would keep him out of trouble. He didn't know about that. But it did come with a set surveillance itinerary and two weeks in a furnished apartment a ten-minute subway ride from the illustrious Bagwell's office, so all in all he guessed he could do worse. 

His mark, Simonson, was a punctual, routine-bound man: as a result the surveillance was boring work. Trailing the poor sap up Wilson and along Gates; stopping to catalogue his chit-chat with his regular news vendor; his barista. On Thursday (thrilling) his dry-cleaner. And then to his job in middle management in an insurance office on the second story of a building on Myrtle. Trent, Marius's self-styled boss, made a point of keeping his inferiors—Marius included—very much in the dark, as if the group of them were some kind of black-ops terrorist sleeper cell rather than… well. Marius'd been assuming a low-grade embezzlement racket, but maybe they _were_ a terrorist sleeper cell. That would liven things up. He yawned, and stretched his legs, sitting on the fountain in the park kitty-corner from Simonson's office block. Maybe Trent just wanted him, Marius, out of the way for some reason, so he could—what? Fuck Marius's nonexistent girlfriend? Break into Marius's nonexistent house? _Best of luck, buddy_ , Marius thought, with a sour twist in his gut. He got up for a turn around the little park. Barring catastrophe, Simonson was in for the morning; no reason to kill the circulation in his legs. 

From Trent's point of view, then, where would Marius be, if Marius were not wandering aimlessly around this butter-pat of urban parkland? A thought experiment (a habit of thought): kill time by playing it out. Marjorie had offered Marius the job before he'd decided the farmhouse was too dicey. Maybe that was Trent's target: Otto's antique firearms, for example. Or maybe Maggie had stashed gold bullion under a loose floorboard in the pantry. Possibly Trent—pale, scrappy, with a deep Bronx accent and a publicly-aired pride at never having left the five Boroughs—actually had designs on the residents of a running-to-seed farmhouse outside of Bridgeport, Connecticut; and he needed to get the unexpected felon who had taken up residence with them out of the way. As a cover, thought Marius, it was actually quite convincing. Imaginary, competent Trent had him halfway impressed. 

Or—if Trent was working with somebody else, say. Then that person could have been observing Marius over a longer period, at closer range. That person could even have been in on the Luka job. Marius had a sudden mental flash, live and full-color, of that asshole Robert (never Bob, always Robert), flipping the pages of his new National Geographic magazines and idly filling in Trent on the fact and manner of Marius's comings and goings and ways of conducting himself: his wheedling phone calls to Katie and his cooperative efforts to calm down Pete; his breathless laughter matched to Maggie's after that antique store thing almost went south, and Porter, later, saying _You and Maggie worked well together_ : goddamn. It gave him a grim satisfaction, imagining Robert telling all of this to Competent Trent, the way Marius would debrief someone on a target he'd been watching, if it were him. Which was funny, really, since it sort of _was_ him. He had a target, after all, even if right now Simonson was hard at work in the beige office with the pictures of the Siamese cat, to which Marius had followed him twice before figuring it wasn't— _Ah_ , he thought, as a glint caught his eye across traffic. Someone ran into his back: he'd stopped moving. _Well._

The Sacred Way looked just as dusty and nondescript from across the street as it had from in front of the display window. Marius stood there, watching the sun glint off the badly-kerned gold lettering. The two a's in the shop name had at some point been painted over with a duller shade; or else all the other letters had been painted fresh and only those two had been left. The storefront as a whole presented absolutely no reason, Marius thought, for him to cross the street. 

Inside the shop Maggie was sitting, facing out of the door to her little back room, giving a reading to a blonde man in a dark suit who faced in, his back to Marius. The man shifted when the door opened, but kept on talking, in a voice which managed to be both bluff and droning. Marius, who still had absolutely no reason to be there, frowned at a display of rose quartz. 

"—is, that's the bitch," the man was saying, jabbing at a card on the table. "The very one. That's what I think."

"Hm," said Maggie. "I'm just not seeing this card as having a romantic connection, Mr. Fermin." 

"Just fucking, then," he said. "I figured as much when I saw her date book. She always—"

"No," Maggie said. "No, you misunderstand, not sexual or romantic, it's more—"

"What I—" Fermin tried.

"What I _am_ seeing," said Maggie, in a weird fake-y trance voice, "is an investment opportunity, a—"

Marius's laugh became a cough. 

"What do you know about investments?" the man asked. "What does a bitch with a sword know about investments?"

Marius rolled his eyes at the rose quartz, which didn't react one way or another.

"—field," Maggie went on. "Or possibly a… warehouse."

"A warehouse, huh. That where she's meeting her flavor of the week?" 

"What I _am_ seeing," Maggie persevered, flipping over another card as Marius bit the inside of his mouth and slouched into his jacket, "is an open—a large space. I'm seeing—children? No. Toys. Children's toys. Figurines."

That was… quite specific, Marius thought. And then he thought—large space. _Figurines_. There was something… Sam's old cellie Rodrigo had got out a year ago now, and rumor was he'd gone straight with some gimmick about toys. Recycling? What had it been? Somewhere out in Queens?

"Bodies," Maggie was saying, "or body—parts," her trance-voice sounding strained as Marius tried to remember the gossip on Rodrigo. Wax? Tires? "I'm seeing a wide open space with—arms… legs…"

"Fuck's sake," Fermin was saying. "I come to you 'cause you got a pipeline on this foofy shit. This woo-woo woman shit." He jabbed the card again. "Fuck knows what _she's_ thinking: it's not rational. See? If it were rational, I could figure it out myself, like I do with my _investment_ portfolio. On which, I don't need _you_ coming up, and—"

"Excuse me," said Marius. Maggie's eyes snapped up and then back down and he stepped in with the tourist sidle, shoulders deferential, apologetic, non-threatening smile. 

"We're in the middle of something," Fermin growled. Marius ratcheted his smile up a notch.

"Oh yes I know," he said. "I know and I'm so sorry to interrupt, I'm—I probably have no idea what you're talking about, I'm—" and he took off the _I <3NY_ hat he'd originally put on to discourage people asking him for directions, and gestured with it, "—not from around here, as you—can you tell? You can probably tell, yeah. Yeah! Of course you can." He laughed; Maggie's eyebrows were climbing toward her hair, but her eyes were tracking him just fine. "I'm just in town from California but I—"

"California," Maggie repeated. She placed the rest of her deck onto the table, and sat back.

"That's right!" Marius told her, brightly. He smiled at her; and she, thinly, smiled back. "Yeah. Berkeley. I'm with the, you know, the university there, do you—have you been?"

"Lovely campus," she said. "Lots of hills." Fermin was looking back and forth between them. Gearing up for a bluster. 

"There _are_ ," Marius said. "It's a hilly town, that's, that's well observed. Ha! So yes, that's actually," he went on, as Fermin huffed, "I heard you—see, I'm a—well not to get too much into my, you know, _thing_ , or whatever, but I'm a professor of environmental science at the university there, and we've been working on a prototype for a recycling plant—I'm probably _totally off base_ here, I've got toy recycling on the brain, it really is a _rapidly_ expanding field, so much to keep track of, I've been holed up all morning in, um, Shelley's Diner over there, reading abstracts, my wife isn't very happy with me, but anyway. What you're describing: it sounds a _striking amount_ like what I've been pitching: warehouse space, disassembled toys, but then then they process them, you see? Convert them into little pellets, which are then converted into marketable waxes and gases via a process that's, well it's actually really elegant, you see the poly _prop_ yline and the—um—" glancing at Fermin, "—anyway, ha, _long story short_ , I wasn't aware there _was_ such a plant anywhere in this area, so I thought. Um. Is there?"

"Well I don't know," Maggie said, slowly. Her eyes were studiously wide: not squeezing together at all at the corners. "I really couldn't say. As I told Mr. Fermin here, all I was picking up on was a wide-open space, and an energy of children's toys."

"And body parts," Fermin chipped in, unable to help himself. "You said you could see arms and legs."

"See and that's—that's exactly what _I_ reacted to," Marius piped up. "Because the testing we've been doing, it's been on this—this shipment of Barbie dolls, you know—um, _do_ you know—?"

"Yes, yes," Fermin said, "Barbie dolls," turning around in his seat to wave Marius on. Over the top of Fermin's head, Marius saw Maggie pass the back of her hand briefly over her mouth, flattening a smile.

"Right," he said. "Yes. Barbie dolls. Yeah, we treat them chemically, you know, to process them into these, like I said, plastic pellets. And then the process _we're_ developing, and not to get too much into the weeds on this one, as my colleague Dr. Bowman says, but it really is _quite_ clever, quite clever, since this is material that traditional recycling, even if they accept it, they won't actually process it. You know. And what made me wonder—well, if there's a plant like this nearby, of course I'd want to visit it. Gather some best practices to bring back to the department."

Cap behind his back, eyebrows up, he looked expectantly between Fermin, who was already reaching for his phone, and Maggie, who was regarding him with her head tipped back, appraising.

"It's in Queens," Fermin announced, to the room at large. 

"There you have it," Maggie said, as Fermin shrugged on his coat and Marius said, " _Queens_ , oh, fascinating, could you—might you write down the address for me, I will—I'll definitely be following up on—thank you so much—"

"Yeah," Fermin said, handing him a business card with an address written on the reverse. "Thanks to you too, buddy." He actually clapped Marius on the shoulder on his way out of the shop. 

The door shut with a little click and a jingle. Marius wiped the absentminded professor off his face with one hand, and looked down at the other holding that shitheel's card. _Tristan Fermin_ it read. _Vice President, Montague & Montague_. He let out a breath on a whistle, and plunked the card down on Maggie's little table, and drew up the chair. 

"Queens," he said, and gestured to the card. Maggie glanced down at it, then back up at him. That little smile around her eyes. He said, "Pete still in touch with Rodrigo?" and she laughed a little, caught out.

"I wasn't dropping hints for you."

"No," he said, "I know. You probably didn't even know I was there, you were busy at the time."

"I knew," she said. "Yeah, I." She cleared her throat. The smile and the easiness leached out of her; and she gave him that calculating fifty-yard stare of hers until his heart kicked up and he sweated down the back of his neck and he felt… annoyance, really. He was annoyed. She _hadn't_ known, or why would she have been surprised when he'd jumped in with his professor act? He pushed his chair up on its back legs; looked down his nose at her but she stared right back.

"He's been playing around with photography lately," she said, at last. "Pete. I told him he needed a hobby, so. He went over to that plant for a shoot and came back with some _truly_ disturbing images."

"Disturbing—?" Marius said. "Three weeks ago you threw eleven million dollars into a bathtub full of acid."

"Yeah," she said, quiet. "I remember." 

She looked down, then, finally: it was a relief, he told himself. He watched her tidy her cards back into their deck, and tap a cigarette out of her pack. He watched her mouth pull up at the edge. 

"And left a _corpse_ next to it," Marius added.

"Yeah," said Maggie, lighting her smoke. "But… a flatbed _truck_ full of dismembered Happy Meal figurines," and Marius burst out laughing, hand over his mouth, and Maggie was laughing too. Girlish, somehow. But knowing, too. After the antique store, he flashed; the warehouse; the way he'd touched her shoulder and then she'd brushed his arm and she'd said _it was your migraine act that saved it_ ; after the park bench when _he won't sell_ she'd said and _That's okay_ , Marius had said back to her, _Maybe we're not buying._

"That what this is?" Marius said, now. He sat forward. _You and Maggie worked well together_ , Porter had said, but he hadn't even been there when she'd been, been weeping about _handkerchiefs_ of all beautiful things to Remi rural antiques dealer and Marius on the couch in a supposed stupor had had to fight himself not to smile, not to grin—or later, his act pushing up against her act and hers pushing against his until they'd fused, until they held each other: and she had said, _For your big party_ and he had said to Remi _You should come; Kevin's going to be there_ and _Yes, honey_ she had said, _Kevin will be there, I promise_ and Marius _had_ smiled, then, he had, and that secret shake of her head that she'd given to Remi but to him, too, to him too, just as much to him—and now here they were. In this back room of a crystal shop on Flushing Ave. He wanted to rub his hands together. "You take your own advice?" he asked her. "Get a hobby to pass your time?"

Something seemed to deflate in her. Why would it, though, he thought. How could it.

"What do you mean," Maggie said. Her voice was flat; emptied of life.

"Come on," Marius said. "This place? This—cards racket? Telling blowhards like that Fermin what they want to hear?"

"You sound a fucking lot like him," Maggie said, "actually. Calling it 'this cards racket'." 

"No," he told her, "no, no, listen, I have a—an idea, for a job. I only need one other—"

"Marius," she said. "No."

"—just listen, okay, listen, you're obviously not—"

"What, _obviously_. You don't know—"

"—fulfilled, or whatever, here, I'm just saying—"

"Marius," she said again, and her tone was final. She was looking right at him, and her eyes were dull behind her cigarette smoke. _What's my gift?_ he had said to her once, and she, like she was giving up, had said: _Just... not to care_. Now she told him, "I'm not doing—whatever you're thinking. So. You can go."

He didn't—it was like she'd slapped him. From nowhere. Two minutes ago they'd been laughing about Happy Meal figurines. 

"I don't," he said. "I didn't just come here for."

"No?" She ground out her cigarette. Not even looking at him. Tidying away her doo-dads, putting things in drawers. Standing up, and dusting off her jeans.

"Okay," he said, "give me a reading."

"Marius."

"No, I—read me, you've read me before. Tell my cards." He swallowed. "Go on."

She stood there. Looked at him. Green eyes and the slump of her shoulders when she breathed out and then how they squared up again and her chair scraped on the floor as she jerked it out.

"Sixty bucks," she said. 

He peeled three twenties out of his wallet and tossed them on the table as Maggie shuffled the deck, angrily, with a deep-simmering contained anger that made him _furious_. She passed him the deck, said "Now you, three times," so he took them and he shuffled and then pushed them toward her on the table, thinking: why was he here, even? Why was he sitting in this dingy little hole in the wall with this train wreck of a woman three-quarters estranged from her equally nightmarish family, when he was supposed to be sitting in a park across from an insurance building or fucking, back in Louisiana, reading fucking cards himself—

"Which stack?" Maggie asked him. She'd lit another cigarette. He looked at her face so she gestured with her eyes: down on the table. Feeling a puppet on bad strings he leaned forward to touch his middle finger to the left stack; she picked it up and turned over cards. 

"What I _do_ see," she said, in that same rote voice she'd used with Fermin.

"Don't—do that," said Marius. 

Maggie's eyes flicked up to him—hard, bored. Fucking horrible: he had to stop himself jerking back. "I'm reading your cards," she said, turning over swords, one after the other: the five, the seven, men bearing swords on their shoulders to parts unknown. "And what I _do_ see," Maggie said, looking up at him, "is that you, Marius Josipovic, are an addict, too, aren't you. Like your mother. Only for you—" the Magician, haloed, his hand close to yet another blade "—your drug is bad faith, isn't it. You've acted in bad faith so long and so much it's—it feels wrong to act any other way. Even when you get nothing from it, no money, no advantage, even when it's against your own best interests, you can't stop yourself, you're playing people _all the time_ —"

"Oh," Marius said, almost spitting, "and you're not."

"—and it's been so long," she said, turning over The Tower, reversed, "you're trapped in it. Aren't you. In this—this quagmire of bad faith, and isolation, and you can't stop pulling stunts like—like showing up here with your little—song-and-dance, because it drives you crazy that anyone else believes in something."

He closed his mouth. She was breathing hard, the Tower still outward-facing toward him on the table. 

"All right," he said. He let the front legs of his chair come to rest again on the floor. He put his stupid cap back on, and jerked the brim down. All his movements came out badly timed. "All right," he said again, "fine. Goodbye." He slammed the piece of rose quartz on the table, not caring if it made him look like Fermin or whoever else chose to waste their time with Maggie Murphy and her cards racket and her auras and her bullshit; and let the door slam and jingle on his way out.  
  


****

  
  
Not three days later, still irritable and distracted, Marius showed himself in Bagwell's office for the standard cocktail of sharp-dressed skepticism and motivational threats. All things being equal, it ended up putting him somewhat back on his game. The interview was short; sweet; and almost unnervingly simple when the only thing Marius had to lie about was the specific reasons he was spending his days traipsing a circuit around Bushwick. 

"I had a talk with your ex-wife the other day," Bagwell told him, at one point, and Marius was already mentally three explanations ahead on why the beautiful Julia might know him by a different, oddly familiar, name, while externally _tsk_ ing and breaking eye contact in a classic _that female_ gesture—but Bagwell just looked thoughtful. 

"Lovely woman," he said.

"Yeah," Marius said, and then, because the _tsk_ needed a follow-up: "Until you get to know her." 

Bagwell's look said Marius was on thin ice. But since anywhere not wholly frozen in and/or trapped under the ice was an unaccustomed upgrade for Marius, he didn't sweat it too much.

Still, that mention of Julia: it got the Bernhardt/Bowman/Murphy clan squarely back in his head. So when he stepped back out into the waiting room to find Audrey slouched in one of Bagwell's cheery yellow plastic waiting-room chairs, he thought at first it couldn't be her; that it couldn't be; that it was just the power of suggestion. Then, for a wasted half-second, that if the whole family could just _leave him alone_ , seriously was just _one place_ of fucking peace in the entire Tri-State Area too much to—

So it was almost a full second before his contingency planning kicked in. Then he got his hand on her arm; helped her up. "Marius," she said, full of meaning, and he: manipulating phone apps in his pocket without looking; steering her to a quiet yet publicly neutral space: the whole deal. Dealing with a teenage loose cannon was one thing. Audrey Bernhardt was quite another. 

They got to-go coffees and sat on a bench in the park. Eyeing each other. As _she'd_ sought _him_ out—he who had honestly, for once in his life, been minding business that was one fucking hundred percent his own—the first move should've been hers, but. Something about the way she scowled down at the lopsided foam rabbit the barista had drawn on top of her latte. Marius's instincts pushed him toward the old _Appear to come clean_ gambit; and at this point, after all, he had very little to lose. 

"So," he said. Leaning back, letting out a breath. "You talked to Carly."

"Carly!" Audrey said. Startled enough to look up from her rabbit; then at once she looked back down. 

_Julia?_ Marius wondered. _… Taylor?_ , but Audrey was shaking her head. 

"Kid hasn't spoken to me for a week," she said. "Anyway. I was tracing… Pete—Marius, the other Marius, so: Pete—tracing him, you, through the usual channels. Inconsistencies came up. I'm not a skip tracer for nothing. Followed them up and they led to you. Marius Josipovic."

Marius spread his hands: here I am.

"Tell you the truth," said Audrey, "I was mostly relieved. I'd known _something_ was off for weeks. It's good to know I haven't lost my instincts."

"So," he said. "You traced Marius, and found me. And yet, here you still are."

"Yeah, well," she said. "It was a real bastard move, what you did."

"Guilty," said Marius. Audrey fiddled with the paper sleeve on her cup. Did she want—did she come all this way for an _apology_? Marius wondered. _Audrey_? He felt like giggling. Wanted, for a crazy second, to call up Carly, or Julia, or—. Any of the clan, really, would get a good laugh out of that one. Marius rested his chin on his knuckles; elbow on his knee. Audrey's paper sleeve came undone and she did it back up and then she sighed.

"It made such a difference for Otto," she said, at last. "Having you around."

And Marius—his chin might have visibly pulled in. He took this on board, looking down at his cappucino's teddy-bear face, looking up. _Well, buddy_ , it seemed to say. Its voice was world-weary, something like Porter's. _Can't say you didn't bring this on yourself._

"He was just," Audrey was saying. "He lit up, having you all in the house again. Or. I mean. Having you in the house."

"You have—," Marius said, and then stopped, and took a breath. "if you found me, you must be able to trace Pete and Maggie, too." Audrey didn't answer. "You know," he said. "Your _actual_ family."

Audrey snorted. Then shifted. Then sighed. 

"I thought about—but." She shook her head. "Maggie's not a forgiver."

"Oh," he said. "Is _that_ who's not." 

"I feel— _awful_ ," she said, in a weird rush, "of course I do. I don't think I made the wrong decision but I wish I could have done it—differently. So it didn't hurt her. And it's. Heavy, to carry around."

"I—sure," said Marius. "Must be." The laughter clawing up in him felt a little unhinged; but her look kept it contained. 

"I liked him," Audrey went on. The floodgates open, apparently. "I liked him. Pete. Oddball guy, not up to much was my read, but I liked him. And I _miss_ Maggie, not her—her weird New Age nonsense or her terrible taste in men but she had such a—I don't know. Such a sparkle, back then."

 _Yeah_ , Marius did not say, _I know the one_ ; and then, sour-mouthed, bit the inside of his cheek. 

"And she had a—I don't know. A quality about her. Like a softness, or—that's not right. A depth. Something. Otto has it, too. And I miss—I wish I could've acted more… carefully." She threw back the last of her latte, and breathed deep. "But it's been twenty years, Marius," she said. "Maggie won't let it go, not now. And I couldn't—I'd have to know, to _know_ , that she wouldn't compromise the family. She drove Julia straight to that storage facility, when it suited her. I can't know… There's no point in talking to her. I can't know."

"So instead you're talking to _me_." Marius said. Audrey laughed, a little. Marius did too, not sure in the moment if he was mocking her or genuinely—what? Curious? Amused? 

"You're right," Audrey said. Hands to her knees, she pushed herself to her feet. Threw her paper cup on the ground and crushed it flat with her shoe; then tossed it in the can next to their bench. "Stupid idea. Better that I deal with Otto, and that you—stay away from my family. Or. Keep staying away."

"Okay," said Marius, at a loss. She nodded at him. And that seemed to be that.

He stood. Finished his coffee. Watching Audrey walk away, back toward the street, he thought that if it wasn't for the Bernhardt-Murphy family his week might almost have been peaceful—then, irritable, checking his watch though he knew the time, thought: well. Peace might be the lot in life of a cog in the machine of some other guy's uninspired con.  
  


****

  
  
Shelley's Diner in the lull between the lunch rush and the after-work dinner crowd was a decent place to wait out the end of Simonson's day at the office. Marius sat with his notebook most afternoons, telling himself half the time he was taking notes for his report to Trent and the other half that he was sketching out potential jobs of his own, but actually, more often than not, just zoning out at one of the booths by the big window, warming his hands on his coffee cup and eavesdropping on the conversations of whoever happened to be sitting at surrounding tables. Porter'd used to say, whether it was selling a magic show or dragging in a mark, there was a rhythm to working a room, or a conversation: sometimes you had to let the lull happen. Let them come to you. Marius would have liked to think that's what he was doing, sitting by the window in Shelley's, but it felt more like he just didn't have any better offers. "Marius," said Marjorie, when he'd told her this in a moment of self-disclosure. "You've been out of mortal peril for a grand total of two weeks." 

"Yeah, yeah," he'd said.

"And prison for less than a month," she'd added. He'd waved his hand, waving away her point, waving away the whole conversation. Yeah, yeah, he thought, now, settling further into his jacket by the window at Shelley's. Yeah, yeah.

"Buy you a piece of pie?" came a woman's voice, just over his shoulder. Presumably talking to the guy in the booth to Marius's back. Of marginal human interest, thought Marius, since that guy was nothing much to look at, and on top of that had had a sour look on his face when Marius had come in. But then, Marius thought, she was probably someone the guy already knew. A friend or a family member. A lover or a former lover. That was the kind of thing people did for each other in normal, run-of-the-mill life, Marius knew. The sour look on the mug's face might even explain why someone who cared about him was shelling out for something to sweeten him up. 

"Marius," Maggie repeated, shaking his shoulder, so he startled and at last looked up into green eyes framing an exasperated crease. "Would you like a piece of pie."

So. He let her buy him a piece of apple pie. She ordered and paid at the counter and then came down to sit across from him, steam rising from her own cup of coffee, while they waited for the waitress to bring over their dessert. Behind the counter a microwave dinged, and a minute later a middle-aged woman in a stained apron slid two plates onto the brown formica. Ice cream melting off the softened crust. Maggie had gone for cherry.

"Thanks," said Marius. Maggie shrugged.

"I'm sorry," she said. "About—at the shop."

"Yeah?" He sat back. "Were you wrong?"

She dragged her fork through the goopy red filling; then sucked it off the tines. Her left hand tapped, absently, at the table by her plate. Wishing diners still allowed smoking, Marius thought; and wanted, suddenly, with a tenderness at odds with everything about them, even in their best moments, to touch her restless hand. 

At last Maggie said, "I was wrong to use the reading that way. And even if what I said about you was—accurate. I was wrong to be cruel."

"Oh well," he said. "I'm a big boy."

He made a little toasting gesture with his fork, and then scooped up another bit of ice cream and apple. The crust was soggy from the microwave, but at least it was warm; Shelley's windows were single-paned. The guy with the sour look, who had not received a visit after all, hacked phlegmily at Marius's back. 

"Honestly, though," Marius said, when the man got over it. "Are you—whatever." 

"Whatever?" Maggie said. Smiling. The gentleness to her smile was at odds with them, too. He didn't know how to read it. Her.

"You… _happy_ ," he said. Waved his fork. "Satisfied. In your new ra—line of work."

"Hm," she said.

"No disrespect," he said, "but. Sixty bucks for a chat with someone's dead granny isn't exactly." He ran his fingers through his hair. 

"Not exactly running for my life from a man who wanted to dissolve my face in acid?" she said, low but pleasant, as if she was sharing a mildly salacious detail at a Tupperware party. Marius snickered. But.

"Not exactly plotting out a job with your—crew, your guy, you know, going in together, playing off each other like you'd planned or—something goes wrong, you work the problem together. Make it out with more cash value than most people make in a year. You wouldn't be crazy to miss that."

Maggie sighed. Her pie was gone; she smeared pink trails through dregs of French Vanilla. "I hurt a lot of people, Marius," she said. "This way I can—maybe help people. At least not hurt them any more. It's not worth an—I don't know. Cheap rush."

"Eleven million dollar rush," Marius said.

"Not worth that either."

Marius nodded. Nodded. Licked his bottom lip. Outside the shadows were getting long; the crowds were thickening. 

"I didn't help people," he said. "When I was—New Orleans. Telling marks just what they wanted to hear and then upselling them on some—magic beans, or." She shifted, and he held up a hand; nodded. Nodded. "I know it could be—you could do it a different way, but. You really think you help people?" 

Maggie looked right at him. Elbows on the table; face still. When Marius looked at someone like that, he was about to take them for as much as he possibly could. 

"I don't know," she said, at last. "Sometimes. When they're in the right place, when they're—asking the right questions. When they're ready."

"When they're ready," he repeated. Almost under his breath. 

"Yeah." 

"That happen a lot?" he said, and she laughed, soft, like the joke was with herself, and looked away at last. 

"Nope," she said, looking out at the businesswomen in their skirt suits and their walking-home sneakers. She chewed on the inside of her lip. "Not a lot," she said. 

The waitress came by with the coffee pot. Maggie turned and smiled up at her, refilling her cup, and the waitress smiled back. Marius looked between them. When she turned the pot in his direction, his mouth did something that felt more like a grimace; but "Thanks," he did say, and she said "Welcome."

"Well," he said, when the waitress had taken the coffee on to their phlegmy neighbor, "that just proves my way's better. You can't help someone unless they're ready? Well. As long as there's something they want, you can con them any time."

Maggie gave a kind of a helpless, half-agreeing shrug. "Sometimes," she said, "you can—help them. To be ready."

"Hm," Marius said. He thought about Maggie and her _vision_ ; the buffalo—no, bison; and sitting at family dinner because Pete had said to her _You like him better_ and they'd both sworn _What can we do, we'll do anything_ ; Luka slumped bloody next to a tub of acid; Audrey telling him _There's no point in talking to her; I can't know_ ; the way Maggie'd touched his arm, after the antiques store; the way he'd told Porter _It's nothing personal, just part of the job_. He pulled the elastic around his notebook, careful; and squared it perfectly with the edge of the table. He felt a little unsteady. He took a breath.

"Okay," he said. "What about a Robin Hood job?"

"A what?" Startled. That was okay. That was good.

"You want to help people, okay. We could do that. You and me could do that better than—no listen," sitting forward, speaking low, "my connections, both of our skills, working together we could make more of a difference in a couple of weeks than you could in six months of waiting for people to walk into that little shop ready to be helped. Look, it's up to you. Choose the mark, choose the, the charitable cause. What do you want? Battered women's shelters? At-risk youth programs? Anyone else we bring on, we pay them fair market rate, but you and me, this is pro bono."

Maggie laughed, incredulous. "You'll just take the money," she said. "You're trying to play me. _You_ don't want to help people. You want the money."

"I mean, yeah, maybe," he said. "I tried that once before. Didn't work out so well for me."

She laughed again: _absurd_ , the laugh said, _ridiculous_ ; but he kept his eyes on her eyes and her laugh dried up; the lines around her eyes changed shape. 

"I need a cigarette," she said, at last, and grabbed her jacket off the pleather seat. Marius took a last swig of his coffee and followed her out into the March night. Outside, leaning against the building, one Beatle boot anchored back against the glass, she flicked her lighter three times before it caught; then breathed deep. 

"Why on earth," she said, "would I _ever_ —"

"Maybe you're helping me," Marius said. 

"Oh my god," said Maggie, laughing again, smoke rippling out of her mouth and nose. 

"Maybe I'll try to play you, and you'll play me back. Maybe _you'll_ take the money." 

"Oh, maybe I'll take the money."

"Yeah," he said. "You got one over on me once; maybe you got a taste for it."

"That was—it wasn't about _you_. Not everything is about you."

"Yeah," he said. "I know." He looked out over the street, then turned back to her; she was watching him. Steady eyes. Grey waves whipping around her face. "Maybe this is," he said. "About me. Maybe you'd be—helping me be ready."

She took a drag on her cigarette, and looked at him. "I don't believe you," she said. 

"No," he said. "All right."

"But Fermin," she said.

"What?" A second, and then he remembered. "That asshole in the shop?"

"Yep," she said. "That's the one." She dragged on her cigarette again, looking out across the street. Her eyes flicked to his, and then back out at traffic. "He's some kind of higher-up," she said. "At Montague & Montague."

"Huh," he said. 

"Mmm."

"Well: deep pockets," he said. "At America's most hated firm. And he seemed pretty unbearable, personally."

Maggie squinted into the middle distance, then flicked her butt on the ground and crushed it with the heel of her boot.

"He always shows up wanting dirt on his wife. Willing to believe the absolute worst. Based on a couple of phone conversations she seems pretty awful too and I don't know if—but I always try to steer his readings away from her. He always tries to steer them back. She wouldn't be losing much, whatever she's like, if he—went away."

"Hm," said Marius. "My tech contacts—if the job had a time limit, and a fall guy set up, I'm betting they could get into the Montague system and—divert funds."

"So then," she said. "You and me would be working the set-up angle. How long would we have?"

"Maybe a week," Marius said. "Maybe less, maybe more. I'd have to talk to some people. Then we'd need a way to clean it, but that we can do."

Shoulder still leant against the building, Maggie just looked at him for a long time. He looked back: face open as he could make it.

"I'm in on all your interactions with the marks," she said, finally. "He knows me, obviously, so they can't see my face. You'll have to wear an ear piece. I'm in on your phone calls, your emails, everything."

"Yeah," he said. "Sure." 

His pulse had picked up. He was thinking about dummy emails; burner phones; thinking: she _wanted_ to do this. She didn't believe him; she didn't trust him; but she wanted to do it. 

"Okay," she said, and stuck out her hand, and he took it. Maggie said, "You have a deal."  
  


****

  
  
"I'm sorry," said Marius, four days later, gathering up his notebook from a coffee shop table on Bedford and running to catch up, "excuse me, is that a Lundehund?"

Amanda Fermin—ombre-highlighted; sun-dried; sinew-toned and wrapped comprehensively in high-end athleisure, a diamond the size of her manicured thumbnail on her left hand—tightened her grip on the leash and turned vaguely in his direction, as if she heard a voice in his general vicinity but was unable to pinpoint quite where it came from.

"A Norwegian Lundehund," he repeated. "Isn't it?" 

Bergljot Sylvi von Golga strained forward; then looked over her shoulder for an explanation for the pause in her afternoon walk, looking all the while as meticulously fluffy and richly caramel-marked as she had appeared on the National Lundehund Association of America website (New England Chapter) of which Maggie, the day before, had spent the entirety of Simonson's work day sending Marius screen caps. Bergljot peeking out of a tent; Bergljot navigating a slalom. Amanda on the NLAA message board, singing the praises of Bergljot. Marius had to admit it had brightened up his surveillance routine. Now Bergljot sat and regarded him with her big black-rimmed eyes, swivelling her left ear to one side in what may or may not have been a sign of skepticism, and Marius felt kind of bad for a second for calling her _it_. Meanwhile, Amanda seemed to have zeroed in on him at last.

"Aaaah," she said, looking at him over the tops of her elaborate gold-rimmed aviators as Marius dialed his smile to 'eager, yet humble.' "Are you an enthusiast of the breed?"

"As a matter of _fact_ ," he said, I only discovered them recently." 

"Oh!" said Amanda, plainly delighted. Maggie laughed, softly, in Marius's ear piece. "Well—say hello! Bergljot, come!" 

Bergljot trotted over, wagging her elegantly-curled tail and grinning absurdly. Marius dropped to his knees and allowed the dog to sniff his hand before fondling her ears. They were very soft. Marius told Bergljot she was a very pretty lady, and she cocked her head at him and wagged her tail. 

"They really are _wonderful_ dogs," Amanda said. Marius waited a beat after she'd started talking to look up. 

"Sorry," he said, "I…" and gestured to his ear piece, "didn't quite catch…" Amanda's face clouded, and then smoothed.

"They're _wonderful dogs_ ," she repeated, slightly louder, so that Marius, getting to his feet, could smile, and nod, and say he'd just fallen in love, a few weeks ago, with one that had been in town with its owner, who was a friend of a friend of his.

"Point scored," muttered Maggie, in his ear piece; and Marius felt—cheerful; brimful with the energy of the back-and-forth dance of dangling the line and hooking the mark. Even money aside he loved it; had always loved it. When it was good the heat of it eddied out along his limbs and pushed him further into it: toward the mark, toward the character he was putting on, and back into the moving breathing bulwarks that were his collaborators: warm hands on him, resisting him, holding him up. Bergljot sat on his foot, and leaned into his leg.

"It's all just so crazy," he told Amanda. "I wasn't even thinking of getting a dog, especially not from a breeder. But now… Can I ask, what's been your experience? Do they tend to bark at strangers, for example? I live in a fourth-floor walk-up: corner unit, but neighbors above and below. Is it—but oh, sorry, I don't mean to horn in on your walk—"

"No, no," said Amanda, smiling, "not at all, please, join us."

"Well—if it's not an inconvenience," Marius said. "I'm Marius, by the way," and she said "Amanda," and they shook hands, lingering it a bit too long, the bulk of her rings digging into the flesh of his palm. He fell into step next to her, giving her an opening with, "Is Bergljot your first, then?" She considered, for a moment, and then, "As a matter of fact, I happen to be the President—" so that Marius could say "No kidding! It's so lucky I ran into you," and imagine Maggie's face on the other side of the connection, smiling too.  
  


****

  
  
Maggie'd told him up front that if they were going to use the shop as a planning base then Pete's proximity would be an issue. Understood, Marius had said; thinking that if Maggie's teenaged niece could break into Pete's apparently-unlocked phone and text herself, then keep up a conversation with him for weeks, having him around was at least as much of an opportunity as a danger. 

_idk_ , Carly's most recent text read, four days after they'd started the hacker team working on the Montague job, when Marius successfully snagged Pete's forgotten phone off the kitchen counter after Maggie had ducked into the bathroom. _it's not like u would feel real connected to the family if u were living here either_. It was time-stamped Yesterday, 7:32pm. 

Marius scrolled up. Pete was a sporadic texter, he saw. Occasionally the two of them would break into sustained conversation—in which Carly would air most all of the dirty laundry from inside the family and some more from outside it—but more often a single message here and there, replied to in short order by Carly, would be followed by a long silence before Pete's next message. When he did respond he would sometimes take up the thread where it'd been left, and sometimes not. Now, Marius typed:

_Thered be people to talk to. Here its just mom and she dont talk to me. I think shes working a new con but she wont say._

From the bathroom: a toilet flush, then the sound of running water. Marius locked the screen on the three dots that meant Carly was typing, turned the phone to vibrate, and slipped it into his jeans pocket. The water shut off. Maggie came out, saying "If the tech team says five more days, then—feet on the ground in the Montague and Montague offices Tuesday? And then Tristan and Amanda's house, when?" and Marius dove back into it with her, waiting for two buzzes against his thigh and then ten minutes more before he excused himself in turn. 

In the bathroom, he unlocked the phone. Carly had written: _what? why do u think that?_ and then, two minutes later: _what do u think she's working on?_

Marius thumbed out: _I heard her on the phone say a half mil. But then she wouldnt talk about it. Or say who she was talking to. She dont tell me anything. She dont trust me._

Marius hit the little blue arrow and sat on the closed toilet lid, listening to the bathroom fan, willing Carly's dots to appear. They did. 

_nobody here trusts me either_ , the message appeared. _they all lie to me and treat me like a kid_

Marius exhaled: good enough. He went into the menu, deleted both of his own messages off the thread, flushed the toilet and ran the water. When he left the bathroom Maggie didn't even look up from the Montague & Montague website, open on her laptop along with a dozen other tabs—caterers, janitors, locksmithing services; and he slid the phone back on the counter with no noise at all.  
  


****

  
  
Two in the morning the Wednesday following—sweating in the polyester uniforms Marius had snagged out of the offices of Montague & Montague's contracted janitorial service, Exall Cleaning, and in company with their new friend Brandon, bored shitless late-night security guard—they were actually mopping the floors. Unexpected. Also, Marius had to admit, bizarrely _fun_. 

The system of clearance at Montague was involved, but (the tech team had said, laughing, when Marius had stopped by their jerry-rigged HQ in Anita's living room to check in about the conversion to cash) nothing they needed to worry about. Obviously exact picture matches would be inadvisable, but it was easy enough to swap vague look-alikes into the system. This had left it up to Marius and Maggie, having "forgot" their Montague-issued badges, to win over Brandon to the extent that he would check, but not too closely, their photos in the online files. 

"My son would forget his own ass if it wasn't attached," Maggie had said, broadening her voice and her accent and leaning her hip against the kiosk where Brandon was standing with his hand on his baton. Inviting him in on the joke. She was so good, Marius had thought. _He_ wanted in on the joke, she was so good. Anyone would. 

"You gotta do this?" Marius had said. "Every time?" 

"Every time!" Maggie had said. "You see? He even admits it, how—"

"Oh, you—"

"—often it happens. One time," she said, as Marius watched Brandon start to laugh at them as he typed commands into his keyboard; and she went on to tell Brandon all about the time that Marius, "before we got this gig," had locked his keys in the car on the Long Island Expressway—"I wanted a cup of coffee!" Marius had said; and "I _told_ you I'd get you a cup of coffee, what did I say, _I'm going to take a piss, do you want anything?_ : my exact words," Maggie shot back—which because it was privately owned was out of the roadside service jurisdiction of AAA, so they'd had the option of going with the insanely expensive roadside assistance outfit flogged by the LIE, or figuring out something else—"And get this," Marius had said, his character pulled into the anecdote against his will as Brandon hid his smile behind his hand stroking his chin, "there was this guy there, with a hex wrench he used to take apart his boat, right?"—which is how the two of them, mother and son, had ended up sitting on their asses in the parking lot of a rest area in Long Island, surrounded by the pieces of the disassembled door of their rented Oldmobile Cutlass Cierra, _still_ unable to access the keys taunting them from the driver's side seat.

"You guys are a trip," Brandon had said, barely bothering to glance at their ID badge pictures on his monitor. "How did you get out of it?"

"Oh," said Maggie, in a tone that assured him he'd better believe her, as Marius, forcing himself to stop watching her, lowered his eyes and scuffed his toe, "we called the expensive roadside assistance people. We just had to explain to them why the side of our car was taken apart."

Brandon had cackled, and waved them through. But then he'd left the kiosk himself to do his rounds: pretty obviously before schedule, and pretty clearly because he wanted to keep chatting with the two of them. Lucky that Maggie had the blueprints memorized: the supply cupboard for this floor was just outside the break room, and she led them there while Marius took a turn telling a story at his own expense about a time he'd enlisted some buddies of his to repair their backyard fence as a birthday present, but then had forgotten to tell her and actually forgotten he'd set it up at all, so that when a gang of burly guys showed up unannounced in their yard—"Long story short, I owed Eddie Velasquez one hell of an apology at the end of the day," Maggie said, rueful and exasperated. By that time she was swabbing the break room counters, and Marius was mopping the floor, while Brandon leaned against the wall. Then Maggie told another one about a parent-teacher meeting, which had Brandon in stitches and Marius, swelling with a weird mixture of pride and anxiety, wondering whether they'd need to trip an alarm to get rid of him. They'd moved from the break room to the open-plan office on the main floor; at this rate they'd be here all night.

"Well," Maggie said. "We should move on to the west side." Brandon stretched, and looked at his watch, and _Finally_ , Marius thought, watching the same thought happen in the subtle shift of Maggie's shoulders as "Oh," Brandon said, surprised, "I'm almost off shift."

When he'd sidled back toward the kiosk, Maggie cocked her head, and Marius nodded, and they scurried off down a series of hallways with her in the lead. Compared to the whole thing with Brandon, actually planting the drive in Fermin's office—glassed-in, very much not open plan—went surprisingly smoothly: Maggie navigated as planned; Marius lock-picked as planned; and then the drop and the lock-up and the return to pack their mops and buckets back into the supply closet. The legitimate cleaning crew would arrive at four; at ten 'til, Maggie and Marius slipped down the fire stairs. In the garage they zipped out of their jumpsuits, stuffed them in Maggie's bag, and took off on foot down Broadway. Marius felt warm; electric. He looked over at Maggie, she was looking back at him. The _satisfaction_ he'd been missing, these past weeks.

"What?" he said.

"No, I just." She shook her head, and looked away, and he laughed.

" _What_?"

"I still haven't figured out," she told him, "what your angle is. How you're going to try to double-cross me." 

That made a jump in him, but a—cooling. He laughed, anyway. 

"Yeah?" he said. "Well, I won't help you."

"Don't worry," she said. That little smile she made, just to herself. She walked closer to him; bumped his shoulder with her own. "I'll work it out."  
  


****

  
  
Two days later the tech team gave them the twelve-hour warning, so Marius texted Amanda Fermin and then abandoned Simonson for the night to pick up Thai takeout and meet Maggie at the shop. 

"Thoughtful!" she said, when she opened the door. Her tone said something more like _Rohypnol?_ , so he made a point of splitting the pineapple curry and the pepper and garlic chicken evenly between two plates, and digging into first one, then the other. She rolled her eyes, and handed him his ear piece. 

They tested the ear piece from the shop's front room to the back room. Marius checked out a display of a selection of gold jewelry that didn't obviously correspond to any body parts he could think of, while Maggie's footsteps got quieter and quieter. "Can you hear me now?" came her voice in his ear, and he smiled.

"Crisp and clear," he said, under his breath, and a minute later Maggie came back through the door by the case of turquoise and said, "All right, soldier, ready for the final push?"

"Oh yeah," said Marius, thinking: _that might go around an upper arm?_. "Can't wait for another date with Amanda."

Maggie didn't laugh, which was—startling, somehow; and then startling that it was startling. He looked up from the display to find her pulling on her aviator jacket. Looking down at the buttons. "Can't say I pity you," she said at last. "I'm the one sneaking around her house, planting evidence. And she's a beautiful woman."

"She's all right," Marius said. "Not really my type." 

"Too old?" she said. 

"Nah." He shrugged. Prickling. "Too unhappy, too hung up on herself… makes her a great mark, but." He cleared his throat. Felt Maggie watching him but he didn't look up; just spread out their little pile of materials on the table. Second thumb drive to match the first; wire transfer receipt; innocuous-looking business letter from a relevant shell corporation. Then he tidied them into a pile, and handed them to Maggie. "Plus, like, I like dogs," he said. "But she _really_ likes dogs."

Maggie snorted, only slightly, shoving the papers into her inside jacket pocket. 

"Not dogs," she said. "Lundehunds." Marius put up his hands.

"My mistake."

Maggie checked her watch, then walked around the table and bent over to shovel a few spoonfuls of rice into her mouth. 

"Still," she said, around her food. "Better than plenty of afternoons we've spent lately."

"What, almost getting killed by a madman? Talking our way out from in front of a gun?"

"Dinner with my family," she said, deadpan, and he laughed, surprised; she grinned up at him, then bent back over the rice. Her hair fell across her forehead. One hand on the table; her silver necklace came loose from her t-shirt and hung down, sparkling in the low light. 

"What would it take," he said. 

"What?"

"I bet Otto misses you."

"Oh, Christ," she said, all the life gone out of her voice, and she straightened up. Not looking at him.

"Carly likes you."

Maggie didn't answer. She strode over to the hat-stand and grabbed a black scarf; looped it around her neck with unnecessary force. You'd never guess from her face now, Marius thought, that she'd just been grinning. 

"Audrey—" Marius tried, but Maggie said, "If Audrey Bernhardt were, you know—constitutionally _capable_ of an expression of personal regret or self-reflection, then, then—everyone in this family would be be living much different lives. Marius. So just."

She moved her arms, palms out: so just. Stop. He put up his own hands, in a mercy gesture, thinking: _Everyone in this family_ , she had said. As if he stood with her, in the circle at which she was gesturing. 

"All right," he said. He slid past her, and opened the door to the street. "All right. Since we haven't got regret or self-reflection, Norwegian Lundehunds it is."  
  


****

  
  
They stopped for flowers, then split up around the corner from the Fermin home—which turned out to be half an entire four-storey apartment building in Park Slope. Amanda explained, opening the door and taking the roses from Marius with a smile, that the previous owners had spent thirty years buying up apartments in the building as they went on the market, and then knocking out the interior walls. Bergljot clicked down the stairs when she heard the door close, then allowed Marius to massage her velvety ears while he unlaced his shoes, and Amanda took the flowers off to the kitchen. 

"Pinot?" Amanda called, from the other room. 

"Mmm!" Marius called back. When heard her rummaging in a drawer for an opener, he darted back out to the entryway and opened the door for Maggie. Bergljot, whose immaculate training ensured that she did not in fact bark at strangers, wagged her entire back end in welcome, and had to be distracted by Marius in order to allow Maggie to slip off up the stairs. 

"Amazing home you've got here!" Marius called, as Maggie murmured, "Out of sight line" in his ear.

Then Amanda was back with the wine, two glasses and a bottle, with what looked like a picture album under one arm. "Oh thank you," she said. "We think so. Of course the previous owners did most of the work for us. Considerate of them!"

He put on a laugh to match her tinkling, high-pitched one, and they clicked their glasses together. 

"And that's—?" he said.

"Oh! Since you're thinking of adding to your family, I thought—it's Bergljot's vanity journal."

Maggie chuckled, low, in Marius's ear, and he smiled more at that than anything else as he sat down next to Amanda on her tastefully beige leather sofa: ear piece on the side away from her. "Take her up on it," Maggie was telling him. "It's unbelievably huge up here. Jesus, in _Brooklyn_!" So Marius put on an interested face as Amanda turned the first page. Bergljot, the star of the hour, flumped down in a ray of afternoon sunshine coming in through the bay window, and started almost immediately to snore. 

She turned out to be a world traveler. Amanda, of course, but also the dog. The album was full of photos—some snapshots, some professional—of Bergljot being led through her paces around the corner at the Westminster Dog Show; but also groomed in Bogotá at the Asociación Club Canino Colombiano, and running through World Dog Show agility tests in both Leipzig and Milan. The official canine portraits from Crufts were particularly lavish, and were followed by snaps of Amanda and two men, all three of them draped in feather neon boas, first in a hotel hallway and then, later, at a nightclub. 

"Birmingham," Amanda told him. She ran a coral nail over the edge of the picture, then pointed. "My friend Michael, and Michael's boyfriend Gary. They came with me to the show with a promise that we could go to the Nightingale afterward. Poor Bergljot thought I was dying the next morning, I was so hungover."

"Seriously," Maggie said. "I haven't found a bedroom _or_ an office yet. Private exercise suite? Jacuzzi? Yes."

"Tristan didn't come with you, then?" Marius asked Amanda. Her face slackened, for a moment; then hardened. Then she gave a cynical little laugh. Marius thought of Maggie saying _She wouldn't be losing much, if he went away_.

"I didn't invite him," Amanda said. "But if I had, he wouldn't have come." She lifted her shoulders, then, and put back her head. "It was fine. I had a better time with Gary and Michael, anyway. No screaming, no crying. Loving insults only."

"Mmm," said Marius. 

Amanda turned the page to a spread of Bergljot jumping over a hurdle with some kind of Buddhist temple in the background, but Amanda didn't explain what it was. Instead she said, "Sometimes it's lovely just to have things be simple. Isn't it."

Amanda was looking at him: brown eyes, parted coral mouth. They hadn't been questions, not either of those sentences; and even if they had been, Marius was probably the worst person in the world to comment on keeping things simple. In his ear, Maggie said "They have a _lovely_ rooftop garden. With an orchid house!" He stayed quiet, and watched Amanda back, and she put her head on his shoulder and turned the page again. Bergljot as a tiny fluff-ball greeted them: in one shot, she was surrounded by other puppies, and doing her best to sit; in another she was grinning up at the photographer from a nest of goose-down and a ripped-apart bed pillow. Marius laughed. 

"She was such a little devil when I first got her," Amanda said. "First day I brought her home, she chewed up the left half of my favorite Jimmy Choos, _and the left half of a brand-new pair of Laboutins. I still cuddled her that night. That's when I knew it was love."_

"Too bad she didn't go for the right half of one," Marius said. Amanda drew back to hit him, lightly, on the shoulder.

"That's exactly what Michael said!" He laughed, because she was laughing. "You know," she said, "for the longest time, before I trained her out of it, she was _horribly_ jealous."

"Jealous?" Marius said. 

"Mmm. She would have a fit if anyone touched me. Tristan, not that—but even if a friend gave me a peck on the cheek. She would bark for ages!" Amanda slid her hand over Marius's hand; fastened her fingers around his knuckles, and drew his palm to her upper thigh.

"Is she—?" said Maggie, in his ear, and Marius, turning to regard the dog still dozing in her sun-spot, made a little noise of affirmation in the back of his throat. In her sleep, Bergljot twitched her paw. 

"Fine," said Maggie. "Great. Use that, then. I need more time."

"Mmm," Marius said, wanting to laugh. "Very well trained." Amanda's leg was dry, and smooth. A little aggressively lipo'ed, but it did mean he could feel her muscles jump when he ran his hand up the inside of her thigh. "Does she stay quiet if you make noise?" he asked. Maggie snorted.

"Why don't you find out," said Amanda, and Maggie full-on cackled and then said, "Sorry! Sorry," and then immediately did it again and then said, "Sorry. I don't mean to distract you."

Marius cleared his throat. Smiled. Slid his hand all the way up.

"Oh—yes," Amanda said. She tipped her head back: ombre tan waves spread out along tan leather. She was damp through the front of her thong. Lacy. Fuschia. "Oh," she said, "you delicious boy." 

"Holy shit," said Maggie, and Marius thought it was running commentary on Amanda until she said, "They've got a whole—ha."

 _Kennel?_ thought Marius. _Armory?_ He scooped aside Amanda's little nothing of a lace triangle and the string digging between her labia and pressed two fingers into her—and hooked—and her breath picked up. She moved her hips. He did it again.

"What was that?" he asked them both. 

"I said you're a delicious filthy boy," Amanda said, and groaned, and Maggie said, "They've got a whole room full of security monitors. The whole house. I'll have to disable them, erase the footage, I… In the meantime," her voice deep, and richly amused, and Marius felt his pulse—kick—as Maggie said, "Hello."

He had to do—something. Had to so he pressed up onto his knees and shuffled closer. Right hand still moving inside her, with the left he pulled Amanda's head up, fingers in her hair; kissed her open mouth. She panted into his. 

"Hello," he said. His voice half-cracked on the way out. Maggie cleared her throat in his ear, and he kissed Amanda to stop the rest of the noises coming from him. 

Her wet mouth. His knuckles squeezed together on either side of her clit and she writhed; moaned; so he did it again. Feeling—sweat-soaked, at sea; he'd never preferred this kind of job and hadn't thought, or—fuck, Maggie. Watching from a camera some—somewhere. Where? He could hear her breathing. Before, she'd been talking to him, she'd been laughing; but he hadn't been able to hear it when she just breathed. And now she was breathing so he could hear and not talking because—Amanda bit his bottom lip; he grunted; Maggie breathed. Because Marius was kissing Amanda, his face pressed to her face: if Maggie talked, Amanda would hear. And Maggie knew she would because she could see them at—Jesus. When they'd come in he'd been focused on distracting Amanda and getting Maggie through the door, he hadn't—he hadn't noticed cameras. Amanda's hand was groping his ass and her thigh came up between his legs and pressed up and he pressed down, fuck, hard in his jeans against her thigh.

"Mmmm," Amanda said. "That's a nice fat cock."

"You want to see?" he said. Gasped. Pulled his face back from her face so she couldn't hear—said, "What do you see? What do you want to see?" 

"Shit," Maggie said, and Amanda said, "Yeah, get it out, show me," and Marius, hooking up—up, with his fingers while his heart beat almost out of his chest, said "That's what you want? To look at me?" and Amanda groaned. 

"Um," said Maggie, and cleared her throat again. 

" _Yeah_ ," he said. "What do _you_ want?"

She was breathing harder. He was sure she was breathing harder. "You shameless tease," Amanda said, and clenched around his fingers, so he shoved in harder and she moaned.

"God, this is so—I hope I'm—" Maggie breathed, and Marius held his breath until she said, "I. I can only see your back."

"Jesus," said Marius. "Okay."

He bent down again. Kissed Amanda: her plumped-up lips, and the inside of her mouth, cool from panting. She reached between the two of them to grope him through his jeans. Palm cupped around the length of him. He kicked his hips, knowing now the camera—one side of the couch or the other; but Maggie was quiet. Amanda jerked his buttons open—one, two, three—and slid her hand inside his boxers to grip him and he groaned. In his ear the slightest—unmeaning—sound—

Marius, breathing fast, not knowing how to—Jesus—buried his face in Amanda's neck. Collarbones. Chest. Kissing down the front of her dress, "Tell me," he muttered, "talk to me," pulling her left knee down with him as he went so that she swiveled, legs open, his knees sliding to the floor between her feet and her, lifting her hips for him to drag down the little fuschia scrap of her thong. "I do like a man who gets on his knees," Amanda said, and Maggie, a little laughter and a lot of breath in her voice, said "Who doesn't, sister"; Marius moaned. Marius on the floor, in profile to the watching camera. Marius, curled around the ridiculous jut of his cock out the fly of his open jeans thinking about megapixels, full HD, made a helpless, overwhelmed little whimper of a noise and buried his face and his tongue next to his fingers, soaked and knuckle-deep in Amanda's meticulous wax job. 

"God," Maggie said. Marius sucked on Amanda's labia, nosed at her clit with the hem of her skirt falling back over the top of his head, let her push her hips up into his teeth feeling he might pass out.

"You like that," Amanda said. Deep; not quite a question. "You like eating out my cunt." 

"I can't see," said Maggie, and _her_ voice was deeper now, rougher now, as she told him, "Take—take her dress off," so Marius, hot-faced, wrenched his mouth up to say, "Take your dress off." In his ear, Maggie said " _Fuck_ ," and he couldn't—for a moment he imagined having to—to take his hand back, get his legs to work; to stand _up_ and unzip her and—but Amanda just shimmied her hips, then reached behind herself and pulled the little shift over her head. Her bra was fuchsia too: fastened in front with a little gold clasp. 

"Hmmm," Maggie said, sounding breathless. "Wonder if she always wears a matching set? Or was she thinking about you when she got dressed."

Marius swore. He put his mouth back on Amanda's clit so he wouldn't break his cover and his hand on his dick so he wouldn't actually die. Maggie right now was thinking about Amanda getting the text Marius had sent on his way to Maggie's place: snapping her bright little lacy bra over her expensive little tits thinking about Marius who'd been thinking about Maggie, waiting for him in the room above the lavender quartz and obsidian displays where Marius had seen her laundry brought in, he'd seen and so now could see her sliding her, her white cotton tank top down over her plain white bra and her freckled shoulders and her sternum and—and pulling up her jeans over black cotton underwear thinking of, fuck, of Marius, _fuck_ he was—stroked, god, again, noisy sucking and his squelching hand and could she—could she see—

"Don't come on my Seirafian rug," Amanda said. Maggie, in his ear, burst out laughing. 

That laugh. Her— _Jesus_ —

He took his hand off himself. Rested his face on Amanda's thigh. Laughing a little himself so he didn't cry. "Okay," he said. "I—yeah, all right." 

"I went all the way to Isfahan for it," Amanda said, and Maggie, still laughing, said, "Oh my god," and Amanda said, "I covered my head and everything."

"Okay," Marius repeated. Panted. He was panting. 

"You can get back up here and come on the leather," Amanda offered. "Easy cleanup," and Marius was doing it, he was pushing himself to his feet; but Maggie, suddenly dark-voiced, laughter banked to a hint at the back of her throat, said, "Don't you dare." 

Marius wanted to—Jesus, God, he wanted to, fuck, he didn't know. He shook his head against Amanda's thigh; shook, free hand clenching on his own leg. 

"You first," he said, at last, and dove back in, and Maggie, in his ear, said, "That's it."

He could hear shifting, through his ear piece. Movement. She was moving, she was touching—and he wanted. Wanted more, wanted—God, his spit and Amanda's wetness dripping all down her thighs and the crack of her little ass and some kind of, of breathing noises, skin noises, in his ear, if only he could _see_. Maggie, voice rough and uneven with motion because she was moving, she was, was touching, must be touching, said, "Jerk yourself," and fuck. Marius whined. Couldn't, but did: brought his hand down to skate, whisper-light, over his rock-hard cock, and his hips moved without a decision and Maggie, stern and delighted and breathless said, "Don't come on Amanda's Seirafian rug," so that Marius, groaning loud enough to wake the neighbors, had to hold everything but his face perfectly still in order to do what she said. His face he was pressing— _pressing_ —hands tight on his thighs with his tongue out and wet dripping down his face and his neck he sucked—Amanda was bucking into him, hard and rhythmic and he moaned and "Yeah," Maggie told him, "let her fuck your face" so Marius moaned. Reached up to grapple at Amanda's hand to bring it down to cup the back of his head.

"God—damn," said Amanda. 

Maggie said, "God" and then groaned, quiet, and said, "Touch yourself don't come," and Marius shook his head against Amanda's cunt, he couldn't—couldn't stop himself, he would—but Maggie said, "God Marius do it" so he reached between his legs and _touched_ and shuddered, full-body, couldn't help it couldn't but Maggie in his ear in her roughed-up voice said, "don't come, don't come, I want you to wait for, I want—" so Marius hooked his right-hand fingers up as hard as he could and moaned loud enough to drown her out because there was, was, was no _way_ he could hear the rest of that and stop himself. Amanda pressed her hips up hard and dug her fingers against the back of his skull, and he held his breath and let her soak his face, hot spurt flooding over the beige leather, listening to Maggie's soft curse and then—the stopping of her breath—  
  


****

  
  
After that—

It was like he was watching himself. Hearing himself; from far away. "I'm—oh my God, I can't believe—I'm deleting footage now," Maggie told him, "I'm leaving the room," still breathing hard, voice still torn up in her throat and he forced himself through it: fell back on twenty years' experience cultivating marks to just keep the con going: making _mmm_ ing noises into Amanda's skin and nodding up-down against her clit as she ground into him again—squirted warm down his neck again; and again as Maggie told him—she told him she'd deleted everything ("Marius"), said she'd found the right office on the security system ("don't"); told him she was there now and she'd planted the evidence and she was slipping out the back way and the whole fucking time he could only hear her like she was bottled up, a tinny radio in the next house because _don't come_ all he was conscious of hearing, _don't come_ on drum repeat in his brain, was how she'd gasped _I want you to wait for—_ and everything, everything after that he had definitely not listened to her say. 

So he didn't come. He didn't cry, either; or spontaneously combust; and he managed to flatten down the drum-beat in his head enough to ease himself out of Amanda's presence without alerting her suspicions. His phone going off in his pocket: a missed appointment, he said. She laughed at him, groaning there on his knees on her Seirafian rug, wincing as he tucked himself, still hard, back into his jeans. Amanda, limp-legged on the soaked couch, smirked up at him, asked, "Sure you can't stay? Wouldn't take long." Which was fucking _painfully_ true; but shaking, his ears ringing, he turned her down. 

Maggie must have heard the door close because as soon as he was outside she was back in his ear. "I'm almost back at the shop," she said, in a voice that _still_ sounded changed. Different. Walking was—not happening, so he flagged down a cab and got in the back and chewed on his thumbnail half-cross-eyed watching Flatbush Ave. crawl by and the whole time Maggie kept _talking_ to him, Christ on a stick. "Marius, Jesus," she said, "I thought I was reading it wrong, I thought I was reading you wrong," and he told her "You don't, you don't, you're—you're good, you walk into a room and read every mark in the place," and he ran his hands over his own thighs; chewed on the knuckle of his right index finger to calm himself down as Maggie said, "When I said—and you, you got on your _knees—_ "

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, you want—" and bit the inside of his mouth, looking out the window. 

"The way you talked to me," she said, "and Amanda too," and Marius groaned as his phone buzzed: the tech team telling him _Done_ and _Out_. Maggie on the end of the line. He rested his forehead against the cool of the cab window and tried to just fucking breathe.

Marius didn't carry plastic which meant he had to wait for the cabbie to actually stop the meter and read it off to him, and then, hands shaking, peel off bills from the wad in his pocket before he could fucking _finally_ get out and close the damned door and then walk, _walk_ , even though he felt like he'd be lucky to manage a crawl: hands and knees, shaking, through six lanes of Brooklyn traffic. But he walked, at a normal speed, like a normal person, like a regular guy without an aching erection, looking both ways and darting behind a bus—'VANQUISH' CHALLENGE 10K OBSTACLES which felt about fucking right—and up to the door of the shop, whose sign said SORRY, WE'RE CLOSED but whose door opened at his knock and before he even registered the tinkling entrance bell he was yanked inside, thrust against the pendant case with Maggie's hands in his t-shirt and her mouth—

 _Jesus_ , her mouth. He'd got a hand on her waist and another in the waves of her hair: pulling her closer, her thigh between his. He pushed his hips against her and had to break the kiss as his—fuck, good, could come in his jeans; he felt his eyes roll up; tipped his head back against the wall. Maggie made a noise half-mocking, half-beside herself, and he brought his hand up—her curving mouth—the way laughter had broken out of her and then—smoldered darker—

He groaned. Heard himself. "Yeah," he said, "fuck, Maggie, I just want to—" He slid a hand up under her tank top, skidding along soft sweaty skin and she kindly pressed his back to the wall so his legs didn't give out. And the door, he realized. They were right next to the door, they should—

"So now," she said, into his ear, "you're going to take the money?"

"No," he said. "Not—no." 

"Hmmm," she said. She was smiling. She was asking him how he was planning to play her and she was smiling and then she hiked him closer to her and slapped his ass, hard, through his jeans. 

" _Fuck_!" he ground out. "Jesus, fuck," and pulled her hip harder against him, _ground_ himself _God_ , he could—wanted to—the room around them a sea of detail unfastened from any meaning, her body outlined in the light from the rose-quartz display and the clock above her left shoulder shaping 7:49 and he couldn't—fingers scrabbling at the button of her jeans which then he unzipped, yanked everything down the few inches it would go and shoved his fingers—

" _Maggie_ " he said. "Oh my god."

Wet. She was gasping in his ear and so _wet_ , soaking her wiry curls and his knuckles and the white cotton of her underwear, white, not black, hitching her hips against his hand and he wanted to just—she would feel _so good_ and he would— _instantly_ —

"Come on," she told him. "Come on, up against the—" and she pulled back enough to bend down, pull her little boots off and her jeans and everything down and off and then lifted herself up on the display counter and pulled him in: hands on his waist, heels around his hips, teeth nibbling his bottom lip, teased for hours he could come like this, she was unbuttoning his jeans, he was going to come. 

"Wait," he said. Hand on her wrist. She stopped but _growled_ and she kept her knuckles pressed against his cock through his boxers. He could _just_ stop himself if she didn't move, but fucking Christ so he kissed her. Ate at her mouth and and she bit at his lips and he wanted. Couldn't help it he pressed hips into her hand and she moaned. Snaked her fingers through his boxer flies and got him out, her warm firm skin and the heat of it—pressing—

"God Maggie fuck, wait," he said, tipping his head back, gasping for breath thinking of—of the grey slop they'd called mashed potatoes in the prison cafeteria, the way ancient Bill had looked eating it, trying to steady his breathing out as he blinked at the clock over the back room door that now said 8:07 as Maggie sat squirming with her legs around him probably wetting the glass of the display counter and Jesus he wanted to just shove into her and fuck. "You'll make me come," he said. 

"Please, Marius," she said. "Fuck, please, want to"; and angled his cock down to rub the head against her pubic bone, labia, pubic bone, belly, as he groaned. 

"Hoping for—something more mu— _fuck_ " as she moved her hips, "okay," he said, panting, holding onto her shoulders, "okay, oh fuck," as she tilted her hips, and pulled him close with her thighs around his hips and he felt the warm wet of her _split_ —

"God Maggie," he groaned. Buried his face in the soft crook of her neck, Downy scent of her t-shirt, god, and her skin. He put his hand back up under her shirt, up her soft belly and her side, soft heavy handful of breast in his palm through the foam of her bra and she moved her hips so he—" _Hunh_ ," said, "god Jesus okay, it's—it's been a. Just give me. A minute."

"Hmm," she said. He could hear her smile in her voice; she ran her hands through his hair and he tried to just. Calm down. Breathe. 

"Maybe you were right," she said. Voice low; hushed; just at his ear.

"What?" said Marius. The smell of her. Rolling his forehead on her shoulder God she felt. Good. Couldn't think. 8:15 by the clock. He said, "I was—?" 

"Maybe I'm still in the game," she said. "Maybe I'm going to take the money."

He gave a wild little broken laugh. "God," he said. "Right now I don't even—take it, take it all."

" _You_ take it all," she said, breathy and ridiculous and also _sincere_ , and startled he laughed and she moved, laughing, and he couldn't, he didn't care, he had to—

"Fuck," he said, " _yes_ , fuck, yes, sorry, I'm sorry I'm sorry I have to I can't wait," and thrust into her, hard, and she crooked one arm around his neck and shoved the other down between them to rub at her clit and moaned " _Yes_ " as he pushed, again, "Fuck, _Marius_ " and to their left the bell jingled and the door opened and Marius, groaning, devastated, forced his head around to look at the door but by the time he'd blinked the sweat out of his eyes and got them to focus—Maggie yelling, "Wait! Honey! Come back!"—Cousin Pete was gone.  
  


****

  
  
They got themselves back together: yanked their clothes back on, and threw the door open. Pete was nowhere to be seen, but he couldn't have gone far. Marius suggested they split up to search; and it was a testament to—something, that Maggie didn't fight him on it. Without a car Pete couldn't have gone far, she said, though she sounded like she wasn't a hundred percent convinced. But she knew the bars he liked. She could check there while Marius dropped by the gyro place he'd been working. So Maggie ran off to the Tugboat, giving Marius a frantic little wave as he turned into the L station; while Marius—who was pretty damn sure Pete hadn't dealt with the discovery of his mother and pseudo-brother with their pants down by dropping back by work—ran down the stairs, waited thirty seconds, ran back up, and grabbed a cab to Anita's place.

Traffic was bad enough he debated a couple of times getting out and walking. But the duffel was waiting, and the cash distribution among the three of them went fast enough. Marius chucked Anita another couple hundred for the use of her car overnight. She handed him the keys, he threw the duffel in the trunk and he was back on the road, texting Maggie at a stop light _He didn't come back here. Where are you?_ and adjusting his GPS mid-block when she texted back the name of the bar. 

Marius double-parked Anita's car outside the Last Call, but he barely had to leave it there since Maggie was already coming out as he shut the driver's side door. 

"Where did you get this car?" she said, at the same time Marius, sliding back into the driver's seat, said, "He'll be at the farmhouse," and reached over to unlock the passenger-side door for Maggie to get in. "You, Carly, and work are the only contacts in his phone."

"The farmhouse," she said—not questioning, apparently, why Marius knew the contents of Pete's address book. "That's what I felt, too, but it seems so… but he's not logical, is he. Well. He doesn't have the money for a bus ticket, he'd—"

"Hitch. He's got a couple hours' head start; it just depends how quick someone picks him up, and how far they'll take him."

"Take I-95, then," Maggie said. "I can watch the shoulder."

So they took I-95, and Maggie watched the shoulder. No Pete at the onramp. Halfway through the Bronx there was a hitcher, and Maggie said, "There!" but it turned out to be a 40-something woman in motorcycle leathers, so: not Pete. Maggie just sat in the passenger seat, mesmerized by the white lines. Marius let her be. At one point he said "I could try texting someone there. To see. Or you could." Maggie's only answer was a snort. When he took the exit for the state highway, she seemed to come back to herself: turning forward with a set jaw. But she still didn't say a word.

At the farmhouse all the lights were on, blazing in the downstairs, as Marius pulled up behind Audrey's truck. "Well _that's_ always good news," Maggie muttered, glaring up at the house. Marius killed the engine, then went around to the back and got the duffel out of the trunk. "What's this?" she said, and he said, "You mind carrying it? My shoulder's acting up." 

"What are you—" she said, but he was already striding up the path to the house. After a beat, he heard her follow.

 _Come on_ , he thought to himself, knocking on the door, _Come on_ , and he got his wish: it was Otto who answered, saying "Pete!" opening his arms, and then "—M-Marius," the hug collapsing, his broad smile sliding into a look of confusion—suspicion—but Marius didn't wait around for him to sort out his feelings. Halfway through the door, not having waited for an invitation, he could see Pete: sitting at the kitchen table, with Audrey and Carly on one side of him and Julia on the other, a bottle between Julia and Pete. All four were looking up, Julia twisting around in her seat to see who the newcomers were as Carly called out, "Marius! And Aunt Maggie!" Audrey had tightened her mouth when she'd seen Marius, but she leapt to her feet as if pricked by a needle, when Maggie followed after.

"I thought I told you—" Audrey said, as Otto said, "Of course she's here, it's her—" and Maggie said, voice tight, "I'm only here to explain to Pete—" while Carly, eyes on Marius, explained, "We may as well all call you Marius now that Pete's here," and Pete, near tears looking from one to the other of them, said, "I used to imagine, every day—" as Marius got out his phone, and started swiping through apps.

"Long time no see, fraudulent Cuz," said Julia, twisting back around in her chair, and toasted Marius with her mostly-empty glass. 

"Listen," said Marius, which had no effect whatsoever. Pete put his face in his hands, shoulders heaving. Carly patted him on the back while Audrey ("What are _either_ of you doing back in my house not _three weeks_ after I specifically told you—"), chest forward, strode toward Maggie ("Oh it's—it's always other people, isn't it, Audrey, it's never you, like I'd have chosen to drive an hour and a half out to this godforsaken—"), who was shifting the duffel further onto her back for a better angle of attack, while Otto tried his best to get between them, and Julia, evidently plastered, cackled quietly in her kitchen chair. 

" _Listen_ ," Marius said again, louder. 

"Who even _are_ you, man?" said Julia. But she said it into the sudden taut silence between Maggie and Audrey, who stood now almost chest-to-chest. Whether they'd stopped shouting because of him, or just arrived at that part of their argument, he wasn't clear; but Marius knew how to grab an opportunity.

"Listen," he said. "Maggie, you said you wanted what you do to help people, okay. I'm doing it. Cards on the table." 

Julia snorted; Maggie's expression mirrored the sentiment. Marius held up his phone.

"Maybe I'm not part of this family," he said. 

" _May_ —no way you're part of the family!" Pete said.

"Shush," Carly said. "Let him talk." Julia patted the table next to Pete's hand. 

"Okay," Marius said, holding out his hands to Pete. "Okay, I'm not part of the family. But you all are, and you talk a good game about it, but you could have each other's backs a lot better if you didn't go around confiding in someone you _know_ is a con artist who stole one of your identities." 

He tapped his screen, and a compressed version of Audrey's voice came out of the little speaker. "I _miss_ Maggie," the recording said. Both Maggie and Audrey turned on him, fast; Audrey shouting "You—bastard—" as Marius scooted backward toward the table, still holding up his phone, and Otto put a hand on Audrey's arm; Maggie making an abortive little grab for the phone before stopping herself, pulling herself back: eyes to the floor; hand to the back of her neck. 

"—quality about her," Audrey's recorded voice was saying. "Like a softness, or—that's not right. A depth. Something. Otto has it, too. And I miss—I wish I could've acted more… carefully. But it's been twenty years, Marius. Maggie won't let it go, not now. And I couldn't—I'd have to know, to _know_ , that she wouldn't compromise the family. She drove Julia straight to that storage facility, when it suited her. I can't know… There's no point in talking to her. I can't know."

Marius tapped his screen again, and the phone went silent. Otto was beaming at Audrey, who scowled at the floor; Carly, mouth open, looked at Julia who, eyebrows up, poured herself another drink—then, as an afterthought, one for Pete, who was openly crying now. Maggie had brought a hand up, pressed over her eyes. 

"Okay," Marius said, into the silence. "All right." Maggie took her hand down and looked at him again, and he went on. "That sounded a lot like _regret and self-reflection_ , Audrey, which—we should maybe talk about misplaced confidences and the fact that like forty percent of your own family has sworn to me personally that you're incapable, but: okay. It doesn't matter, wouldn't be worth talking because you can't know about her attitude toward the family. Fine. Look in Maggie's duffel."

Maggie startled, visibly. She stared at Marius and he stared right back: _Up to you_ , he thought, and: _I dare you_. He could feel Audrey's eyes on him, too, and the others', but he didn't look over. He held Maggie's gaze; and when Audrey came up in his peripheral vision he saw Maggie, without a word, move her shoulder so that Audrey could take the bag. Audrey gave a quiet grunt at the weight of it, then carried it over to the table, slung it down, and unzipped it. Julia gasped. 

"Half a million," said Marius. "You can count it, though it'll take a while." 

"That's how much—" said Audrey, and then stopped. 

"Oh, _shit_ ," said Carly. 

"—how much Julia owes Dockery's associate," Marius said. "Or so Maggie tells me."

Julia cough-hiccuped, and reached an unsteady hand to touch one of the bundles of bills. "Aunt Maggie?" she said, though it sounded more to herself than to Maggie—who stood, speechless, wide eyes on Marius's face. "How did—how'd Aunt _Maggie_ know?" said Julia. 

"Carly has a text string with Pete," Marius said. 

"How did _Carly_ find out?" said Otto, at the same time as Pete said, "I didn't tell ma!" and Audrey muttered, "I'm coming to think Carly knows just about everything that goes on around here." 

Carly flushed red. Julia looked like she was having trouble focusing her eyes; but she still saw that blush. "You—" she said. "You told Pete

"I told him not to tell," Carly said, half-sulky, half-proud. "It was a secret."

"I _didn't_ —" Pete insisted, but Carly cut over him.

"But you said! You said you thought Aunt Maggie was working a new con. You said you'd heard her on the phone say half a million."

"I didn't say anything," Pete said. "I didn't—"

"Sure you did, Pete," Marius said. He came around the back of Pete's chair to massage his shoulder; Pete shrugged him off. "What I hear, you came home pretty well smashed after the Tugboat. You'd been texting with Carly—that was back a few weeks ago, wasn't it—and there was your ma, at home for once. She made you a cup of coffee and you told her everything. Everything your cousin had confided in you, because you're a good guy, Pete, and you were worried about the family. And then your ma was worried about the family, too. So she got in touch with me. Set this up."

He looked to Maggie, at that: her eyes locked to his. He smiled a little, himself. Any moment now, he thought. He could see the words forming in her mouth. Like the antiques store, like the casino: _Everything he just told you is a lie_.

"So you're saying," said Audrey, " _Maggie_ —" She was looking between Carly and the duffel; Maggie and Julia, who was petting one of the bundles of money like it was a cat. 

"Yep," said Marius. "All Maggie. She organized the whole thing. Had the relevant in, and everything. Only brought me in because I know a few people she needed to pull it off, but." He was grinning at Maggie now, and he could feel it. She was glancing between him and Audrey, and he could feel it, he could _feel_ her about to open her mouth. Audrey would say _Is this true, Maggie?_ and Maggie would look at her, and look at Marius, and look at poor Pete, and she would say _It's all lies, Audrey, every word_ —which wasn't, strictly speaking, true—and then Audrey would say _I knew it_ and Marius would have won. 

"You know, I was a hard sell," Marius said. He'd made his way back around Pete's chair to stand in front of Maggie, daring her from a few feet away. "I don't usually play the hired gun to someone else's con. I'm more of an idea man. But Maggie here talked me around. She said it'd been so long since she'd seen any of you, this family, and all that time she knew she couldn't stick around because she and Audrey would never see eye to eye. But she hadn't realized, all the time he'd been away, how Pete had been thinking about this place. And this was one thing she could do for him, and for Julia, and you all. Maybe I thought I owed you something, too, after—you know. Impersonating Pete, and everything."

He saw the click in her eyes, and her little smile: there. He smiled back at her, and stepped away. "You think?" Audrey was asking him, wry, as Pete muttered "Damn straight," into his beer, and Marius was so primed for _Everything he just told you_ that he didn't understand at first when Maggie, brushing his hand on her way around him to slap a hand to Audrey's shoulder, said, "That's about the size of it, Mom."

Later, after newfound drinking buddies Pete and Julia had been manhandled up to beds; and Otto and Audrey had given both Marius and Maggie odd, wary hugs; and a negotiation about bedrooms and motels had ended with Audrey offended despite herself at the idea that her niece's benefactors—family and no—wouldn't stay the night under her roof, Maggie found Marius out on the front steps. He'd just been sitting, looking out at whatever it was people looked at in the country. Audrey's truck; the pines. The right fender of Anita's little Dart, a sliver of brighter color in the dark. Maggie had a beer bottle in either hand. She held them both out to him. He took the right one, and she sat down next to him on the steps. 

"Cards on the table, huh," Maggie said. 

"Well," said Marius. "Cards—worked so well for us last time we tried them. You know. I just thought."

Maggie snorted; then swung her head in a wry nod: a point scored. 

"Can't believe you conned me into giving it another try with my mom."

"Hey now," Marius said. "That wasn't a con; I was _helping you be ready_."

"Oh, yeah, okay," she said, and punched him on the arm just hard enough that he rocked to one side, and she rocked with him; and when he caught himself and tipped back upright they were a little closer together than they had been. They settled; sat. 

"Con or no," she said, "this was quite the surprise. I was all set for you to drive off with the money. Pick up your take from Anita and hit the road."

"What?" 

"Well," she said. "I didn't know the details of the timing, but. More or less."

"Then you—why'd you let me go?" he said. "Why'd you agree to the whole thing in the first place?"

She shrugged. "Fermin's an asshole," she said. "And I. Wanted the thrill of it. The fun of it. I just—wanted to work with you again."

Marius closed his eyes; opened them. He transferred his beer bottle to his other hand so he could put the left one, wet with condensation, on Maggie's knee. 

"Yeah," he said. He cleared his throat. "Well. I'm glad you did. Obviously." 

They sat there, sides against each other's sides, breath clouding out into the night air. Her leg was warm and solid under his hand. He felt at once that his whole skin was lit up with her, and that he might fall asleep right there, on a farm outside Bridgeport, Connecticut, listening to Maggie Murphy's even breath. 

"So," she said, at last. "Us, earlier. In the back of the shop."

"Yeah," he said. 

"That was—you knew Pete was coming back, and where he would go."

"I had a pretty good idea," Marius said. 

Maggie was quiet for another long while. Eventually she said, "Did you actually want it? For you?" 

Stupidly, Marius's adrenaline response was kicking in. Pounding; pounding; high up in his chest; she could probably feel it through his palm's connection with her knee. All around them, little chirping noises. Bats, Marius thought. There were _bats_ out here in the country. He shook his head.

"If you really can, fucking—see auras, or whatever you say. Then you know exactly what I wanted."

Maggie just looked at him. Studied, like always, by the porch light; that little hint of a smile and her sad eyes. After a while she nodded. Marius looked back over the trees; the path leading down to the drive. Maggie sat next to him, and they drank. After a minute she reached down, and interlaced her fingers with his own.

**Author's Note:**

> Is this whole story an excuse for pictures of Norwegian Lundehunds? I mean, not _only_ that. Still, look at these dorks.
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End file.
